Been a while. Mostly been reading - currently working on Instrument of War by Christopher Duffy, Clash of Empire in the Balkans (recommended by a member of Virtual Wargames Club), and The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy on audio. Thought I'd try another round of Kill Team and this time give my new Scottish Militia an airing. As their opponents are represented by 8th Army, I thought the battle of Kingmoor from the VBCW backstory would fit. This was a disastrous defeat for the Scottish Republic as it tried to support an Albertine landing from Canada. It was fought in industrial terrain, so the nice MDF ruins and board from the Kill Team starter sets works just fine.
The sides:
Six Royalist riflemen (8 hit points each, 4+ saves, 4+ on shooting rolls), and a Vickers machine-gun team (14HP, 3+ save, 3+ to shoot, gets to shoot twice in a turn).
Nine Scottish Republican militia (7 HP each, 5+ saves, 4+ to shoot), including one special weapon (a Bren gun).
This is even, at least in wound totals. The Royalists, being professionals, are better and more heavily armed, but there are fewer of them. Well, the Vickers team counts as one for purposes of play - the extra wounds are for the extra crew and the save, hmm, could be them hiding behind the gun?
Turn 1: The Scots militia gets the crap kicked out of it - one dead and three seriously wounded (one HP left!), plus the Bren gunner down to four wounds. The Royalists have taken minor wounds to two men. The severely injured Scotsmen conceal themselves in cover. That the Royalists were outnumbered meant a couple figures who had otherwise expended their move got to "react" between the last Scottish moves, which meant the Vickers team fired three times during the turn...
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| Royalist side - a couple men wounded but still fighting at full strength. |
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| Three guys near incapacitated and the Bren gunner wounded. |
Turn 2: Things get worse. The Scots lost two more figures and all the survivors save one have 1HP left. (This is because the Royalist weapons do three damage on a hit, and with four shots they usually got two hits thru after cover saves.) Technically, this only reduces the Scottish moves by 2", but it also reduces their to-hits by one, which means they need 6s. Two of the severely wounded men I put on Conceal orders; while this kept them alive, it meant they couldn't shoot during the turn. I could keep going, but I think we're done here.
At least it matches the storyline! I also didn't strictly follow the solo instructions for the NPO's (non-player operatives), which might have given the Scots a better chance. It didn't help that the Royalists got initiative both turns, which allowed them to fire their machine gun and take Scots off the board right away. Perhaps more terrain next time... or the bespoke VBCW ruleset Went the Day Well?
See you next time. Might go to the club next Sunday and run either VBCW or Charge!
I visited Carlisle once, and it looked fairly grim, but not as grim as your table suggests. It has clearly been shaped by its position as a defence against the Scots. Also the near-constant drizzle kept the cotton threads from drying out and snapping in the machines, which brought the mills there.
ReplyDeleteThe search for a good set of rules for non-player actions is one of those constant obsessions for solo players. If the enemy reacts predictably like robots, the player can exploit that knowledge. If they are too random, they won't make the smart moves that a human opponent might.
I visited Carlisle Castle and enjoyed it very much. Picked up a copy of GW Fraser's History of the Border Reivers there; his writing was what made me want to visit Scotland in the first place.
DeleteIn this case, my deployment of the Scots was quite poor, and I failed to foresee how the way initiative and semi-simultaneous movement work in Kill Team would make things difficult.
There's a whole extra level of decisions for a solo system to make when the rules for two players add options like which units to activate, whether to use tactic cards,when to spend command points or similar, rather than something simple like "move all your men, then resolve shooting"
DeleteIn this case, I am just using the "basic" rules, which helps immensely when it comes to memorizing stuff. One of the things that eventually put me off Games Workshop were the smorgasbord of rules, quite aside from changing them every three years. Even Warlord Games, which has similarities to their model, at least makes a lot of the rules optional and "friendly." (Bolt Action may be different, since there are regular tournaments for it.)
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